Electronic Publishing: Why isn’t it cheaper? Lloyd Alan Fletcher Information Systems Manager Institute of Physics Publishing UKSG Seminar Bristol, 29th January

Questions to answer l What costs does e-publishing enable us to avoid? l What new costs do we incur? l How are cost drivers likely to change in the future?

Avoidable costs?

Costs that exist for both print and electronic l Acquisition, submission l Peer review process l Editing, quality control l Production (e.g., XML file processing) l About 80 percent of the total publishing costs

E-only production costs l Online publication (putting the files online) l Online article quality checking, reference link checking

After delivery support costs l Customer account set-up and administration l Statistics and reports l Customer and user trouble resolution (first and some second line support)

System (software) development costs l One-off build cost in the first place l Periodic re-design l One-off archive cost l Trouble fixing (second and third line support) l Demand for new features (e.g., z39.50 access, OpenURL, rich export functionality, searching)

System infrastructure costs l Internal network l Data storage l Internal and online servers l Bandwidth l E-publishing platform software l Technology maintenance (patches, upgrades, compatibility) l Hardware & software maintenance contracts l Performance (application, server, network) l Research: e.g., new access control methods, standards compliance, new features

So what will drive down costs? l Demand for print dwindles l Declining cost of IT in general l Economies of scale and scope (e.g., common Books and Journals publishing systems, publishers joining forces) l Open source (“free”) software: e.g., Linux operating system l Driving down cost of software ownership through better development practises

In conclusion l Electronic publishing will be cheaper than print only when print disappears altogether l